Man and Nature Part 32

So have the Latines their _prope_, _fere_, _juxta_, _circiter_, _plus minus_, used in matters of fact by the most authentic Historians. Yea, we may observe that the Spirit of Truth itself, where _Numbers_ and _Measures_ are concerned, in Times, Places, and Persons, useth the aforesaid Modifications, save in such cases where some mystery contained in the number requireth a particular specification thereof:

In Times. In Places. In Person.

Daniel, 5:33. Luke, 24:13. Exodus, 12:37.

Luke, 3:23. John, 6:19. Acts, 2:41.

None therefore can justly find fault with me, if, on the like occasion, I have secured myself with the same Qualifications. Indeed, such Historians who grind their Intelligence to the _powder of fraction_, pretending to _cleave the pin_, do sometimes _misse the But_. Thus, one reporteth, how in the Persecution under _Dioeletian_, there were neither under nor over, but just _nine hundred ninety-nine_ martyrs. Yea, generally those that trade in such _Retail-ware_, and deal in such small parcells, may by the ignorant be commended for their _care_, but condemned by the judicious for their ridiculous _curiosity_."--_The History of the Worthies of England_, i, p. 59.

[234] SURELL, _Les Torrents des Hautes Alpes_, chap. xxiv. In such cases, the clearing of the ground, which, in consequence of a temporary diversion of the waters, or from some other cause, has become rewooded, sometimes renews the ravages of the torrent. Thus, on the left bank of the Durance, a wooded declivity had been formed by the debris brought down by torrents, which had extinguished themselves after having swept off much of the superficial strata of the mountain of Morgon. "All this district was covered with woods, which have now been thinned out and are peris.h.i.+ng from day to day; consequently, the torrents have recommenced their devastations, and if the clearings continue, this declivity, now fertile, will be ruined, like so many others."--Id., p. 155.

[235] Where a torrent has not been long in operation, and earth still remains mixed with the rocks and gravel it heaps up at its point of eruption, vegetation soon starts up and prospers, if protected from encroachment. In Provence, "several communes determined, about ten years ago, to reserve the soils thus wasted, that is, to abandon them for a certain time, to spontaneous vegetation, which was not slow in making its appearance."--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats_, p. 315.

[236] Rock is permeable by water to a greater extent than is generally supposed. Freshly quarried marble, and even granite, as well as most other stones, are sensibly heavier, as well as softer and more easily wrought, than after they are dried and hardened by air-seasoning. Many sandstones are porous enough to serve as filters for liquids, and much of that of Upper Egypt and Nubia hisses audibly when thrown into water, from the escape of the air forced out of it by hydrostatic pressure and the capillary attraction of the pores for water. See _Appendix_, No. 29.

[237] Palissy had observed the action of frost in disintegrating rock, and he thus describes it, in his essay on the formation of ice: "I know that the stones of the mountains of Ardennes be harder than marble.

Nevertheless, the people of that country do not quarry the said stones in winter, for that they be subject to frost; and many times the rocks have been seen to fall without being cut, by means whereof many people have been killed, when the said rocks were thawing." Palissy was ignorant of the expansion of water in freezing--in fact he supposed that the mechanical force exerted by freezing water was due to compression, not dilatation--and therefore he ascribes to thawing alone effects resulting not less from congelation.

Various forces combine to produce the stone avalanches of the higher Alps, the fall of which is one of the greatest dangers incurred by the adventurous explorers of those regions--the direct action of the sun upon the stone, the expansion of freezing water, and the loosening of ma.s.ses of rock by the thawing of the ice which supported them or held them together.

[238] WESSELY, _Die Oesterreichischen Alpenlander und ihre Forste_, pp.

125, 126. Wessely records several other more or less similar occurrences in the Austrian Alps. Some of them, certainly, are not to be ascribed to the removal of the woods, but in most cases they are clearly traceable to that cause.

[239] BIANCHI, Appendix to the Italian translation of Mrs. SOMERVILLE's _Physical Geography_, p. x.x.xvi.

[240] See in KOHL, _Alpenreisen_, i, 120, an account of the ruin of fields and pastures, and even of the destruction of a broad belt of forest, by the fall of rocks in consequence of cutting a few large trees. Cattle are very often killed in Switzerland by rock avalanches, and their owners secure themselves from loss by insurance against this risk as against damage by fire or hail.

[241] _Entwaldung der Gebirge_, p. 41.

[242] The importance of the wood in preventing avalanches is well ill.u.s.trated by the fact that, where the forest is wanting, the inhabitants of localities exposed to snow slides often supply the place of the trees by driving stakes through the snow into the ground, and thus checking its propensity to slip. The woods themselves are sometimes thus protected against avalanches originating on slopes above them, and as a further security, small trees are cut down along the upper line of the forest, and laid against the trunks of larger trees, transversely to the path of the slide, to serve as a fence or dam to the motion of an incipient avalanche, which may by this means be arrested before it acquires a destructive velocity and force.

[243] The tide rises at Quebec to the height of twenty-five feet, and when it is aided by a northeast wind, it flows with almost irresistible violence. Rafts containing several hundred thousand cubic feet of timber are often caught by the flood tide, torn to pieces, and dispersed for miles along the sh.o.r.es.

[244] One of these, the Baron of Renfrew--so named from one of the t.i.tles of the kings of England--built thirty or forty years ago, measured 5,000 tons. They were little else than rafts, being almost solid ma.s.ses of timber designed to be taken to pieces and sold as lumber on arriving at their port of destination.

The lumber trade at Quebec is still very large. According to a recent article in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, that city exported, in 1860, 30,000,000 cubic feet of squared timber, and 400,000,000 square feet of "planches." The thickness of the boards is not stated, but I believe they are generally cut an inch and a quarter thick for the Quebec trade, and as they shrink somewhat in drying, we may estimate ten square for one cubic foot of boards. This gives a total of 70,000,000 cubic feet.

The specific gravity of white pine is .554, and the weight of this quant.i.ty of lumber, very little of which is thoroughly seasoned, would exceed a million of tons, even supposing it to consist wholly of wood as light as pine. New Brunswick, too, exports a large amount of lumber.

[245] This name, from the French _chantier_, which has a wider meaning, is applied in America to temporary huts or habitations erected for the convenience of forest life, or in connection with works of material improvement.

[246] Trees differ much in their power of resisting the action of forest fires. Different woods vary greatly in combustibility, and even when their bark is scarcely scorched, they are, partly in consequence of physiological character, and partly from the greater or less depth at which their roots habitually lie below the surface, very differently affected by running fires. The white pine, _Pinus strobus_, as it is the most valuable, is also perhaps the most delicate tree of the American forest, while its congener, the Northern pitch pine, _Pinus rigida_, is less injured by fire than any other tree of that country. I have heard experienced lumbermen maintain that the growth of this pine was even accelerated by a fire brisk enough to destroy all other trees, and I have myself seen it still flouris.h.i.+ng after a conflagration which had left not a green leaf but its own in the wood, and actually throwing out fresh foliage, when the old had been quite burnt off and the bark almost converted into charcoal. The wood of the pitch pine is of comparatively little value for the joiner, but it is useful for very many purposes.

Its rapidity of growth in even poor soils, its hardihood, and its abundant yield of resinous products, ent.i.tle it to much more consideration, as a plantation tree, than it has. .h.i.therto received in Europe or America.

[247] Between fifty and sixty years ago, a steep mountain with which I am very familiar, composed of metamorphic rock, and at that time covered with a thick coating of soil and a dense primeval forest, was accidentally burnt over. The fire took place in a very dry season, the slope of the mountain was too rapid to retain much water, and the conflagration was of an extraordinarily fierce character, consuming the wood almost entirely, burning the leaves and combustible portion of the mould, and in many places cracking and disintegrating the rock beneath.

The rains of the following autumn carried off much of the remaining soil, and the mountain side was nearly bare of wood for two or three years afterward. At length, a new crop of trees sprang up and grew vigorously, and the mountain is now thickly covered again. But the depth of mould and earth is too small to allow the trees to reach maturity.

When they attain to the diameter of about six inches, they uniformly die, and this they will no doubt continue to do until the decay of leaves and wood on the surface, and the decomposition of the subjacent rock, shall have formed, perhaps hundreds of years hence, a stratum of soil thick enough to support a full-grown forest.

[248] The growth of the white pine, on a good soil and in open ground, is rather rapid until it reaches the diameter of a couple of feet, after which it is much slower. The favorite habitat of this tree is light sandy earth. On this soil, and in a dense wood, it requires a century to attain the diameter of a yard. Emerson (_Trees of Ma.s.sachusetts_, p.

65), says that a pine of this species, near Paris, "thirty years planted, is eighty feet high, with a diameter of three feet." He also states that ten white pines planted at Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1809 or 1810, exhibited, in the winter of 1841 and 1842, an average of twenty inches diameter at the ground, the two largest measuring, at the height of three feet, four feet eight inches in circ.u.mference; and he mentions another pine growing in a rocky swamp, which, at the age of thirty-two years, "gave seven feet in circ.u.mference at the but, with a height of sixty-two feet six inches." This latter I suppose to be a seedling, the others _transplanted_ trees, which might have been some years old when placed where they finally grew.

The following case came under my own observation: In 1824, a pine tree, so small that a young lady, with the help of a lad, took it up from the ground and carried it a quarter of a mile, was planted near a house in a town in Vermont. It was occasionally watered, but received no other special treatment. I measured this tree in 1860, and found it, at four feet from the ground, and entirely above the spread of the roots, two feet and four inches in diameter. It could not have been more than three inches through when transplanted, and must have increased its diameter twenty-five inches in thirty-six years.

[249] WILLIAMS, _History of Vermont_, ii, p. 53. DWIGHT's _Travels_, iv, p. 21, and iii, p. 36. EMERSON, _Trees of Ma.s.sachusetts_, p. 61. PARISH, _Life of President Wheelock_, p. 56.

[250] The forest trees of the Northern States do not attain to extreme longevity in the dense woods. Dr. Williams found that none of the huge pines, the age of which he ascertained, exceeded three hundred and fifty or four hundred years, though he quotes a friend who thought he had noticed trees considerably older. The oak lives longer than the pine, and the hemlock spruce is perhaps equally long lived. A tree of this latter species, cut within my knowledge in a thick wood, counted four hundred and eighty-six, or, according to another observer, five hundred annual circles.

Great luxuriance of animal and vegetable production is not commonly accompanied by long duration of the individual. The oldest men are not found in the crowded city; and in the tropics, where life is prolific and precocious, it is also short. The most ancient forest trees of which we have accounts have not been those growing in thick woods, but isolated specimens, with no taller neighbor to intercept the light and heat and air, and no rival to share the nutriment afforded by the soil.

The more rapid growth and greater dimensions of trees standing near the boundary of the forest, are matters of familiar observation. "Long experience has shown that trees growing on the confines of the wood may be cut at sixty years of age as advantageously as others of the same species, reared in the depth of the forest, at a hundred and twenty. We have often remarked, in our Alps, that the trunk of trees upon the border of a grove is most developed or enlarged upon the outer or open side, where the branches extend themselves farthest, while the concentric circles of growth are most uniform in those entirely surrounded by other trees, or standing entirely alone."--A. and G.

VILLA, _Necessita dei Boschi_, pp. 17, 18.

[251] Caimi states that "a single flotation in the Valtelline in 1839, caused damages alleged to amount to more than $800,000, and actually appraised at $250,000."--_Cenni sulla Importanza e Coltura dei Boschi_, p. 65.

[252] Most physicists who have investigated the laws of natural hydraulics maintain that, in consequence of direct obstruction and frictional resistance to the flow of the water of rivers along their banks, there is both an increased rapidity of current and an elevation of the water in the middle of the channel, so that a river presents always a convex surface. The lumbermen deny this. They affirm that, while rivers are rising, the water is highest in the middle of the channel, and tends to throw floating objects sh.o.r.eward; while they are falling, it is lowest in the middle, and floating objects incline toward the centre. Logs, they say, rolled into the water during the rise, are very apt to lodge on the banks, while those set afloat during the falling of the waters keep in the current, and are carried without hindrance to their destination.

Foresters and lumbermen, like sailors and other persons whose daily occupations bring them into contact, and often, into conflict, with great natural forces, have many peculiar opinions, not to say superst.i.tions. In one of these categories we must rank the universal belief of lumbermen, that with a given head of water, and in a given number of hours, a sawmill cuts more lumber by night than by day. Having been personally interested in several sawmills, I have frequently conversed with sawyers on this subject, and have always been a.s.sured by them that their uniform experience established the fact that, other things being equal, the action of the machinery of sawmills is more rapid by night than by day. I am sorry--perhaps I ought to be ashamed--to say that my scepticism has been too strong to allow me to avail myself of my opportunities of testing this question by pa.s.sing a night, watch in hand, counting the strokes of a millsaw. More unprejudiced, and I must add, very intelligent and credible persons have informed me that they have done so, and found the report of the sawyers abundantly confirmed. A land surveyor, who was also an experienced lumberman, sawyer, and machinist, a good mathematician and an exact observer, has repeatedly told me, that he had very often "timed"

sawmills, and found the difference in favor of night work above thirty per cent. _Sed quaere._

[253] For many instances of this sort, see BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, pp. 301-303. In 1664, the Swedes made an incursion into Jutland and felled a considerable extent of forest. After they retired, a survey of the damage was had, and the report is still extant. The number of trees cut was found to be 120,000, and as an account was kept of the numbers of each species of tree, the doc.u.ment is of interest in the history of the forest, as showing the relative proportions between the different trees which composed the wood. See VAUPELL. _Bogens Indvandring_, p. 35, and _Notes_, p. 55.

[254] Since writing this paragraph, I have fallen upon--and that in a Spanish author--one of those odd coincidences of thought which every man of miscellaneous reading so often meets with. Antonio Ponz (_Viage de Espana_, i, prologo, p. lxiii), says: "Nor would this be so great an evil, were not some of them declaimers against _trees_, thereby proclaiming themselves, in some sort, enemies of the works of G.o.d, who gave us the leafy abode of Paradise to dwell in, where we should be even now sojourning, but for the first sin, which expelled us from it."

I do not know at what period the two Castiles were bared of their woods, but the Spaniard's proverbial "hatred of a tree" is of long standing.

Herrera vigorously combats this foolish prejudice; and Ponz, in the prologue to the ninth volume of his journey, says that many carried it so far as wantonly to destroy the shade and ornamental trees planted by the munic.i.p.al authorities. "Trees," they contended, and still believe, "breed birds, and birds eat up the grain." Our author argues against the supposition of the "breeding of birds by trees," which, he says, is as absurd as to believe that an elm tree can yield pears; and he charitably suggests that the expression is, perhaps, a _maniere de dire_, a popular phrase, signifying simply that trees harbor birds.

[255] Religious intolerance had produced similar effects in France at an earlier period. "The revocation of the edict of Nantes and the dragonnades occasioned the sale of the forests of the unhappy Protestants, who fled to seek in foreign lands the liberty of conscience which was refused to them in France. The forests were soon felled by the purchasers, and the soil in part brought under cultivation."'--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 303.

[256] The American reader must be reminded that, in the language of the chase and of the English law, a "forest" is not necessarily a wood. Any large extent of ground, withdrawn from cultivation, reserved for the pleasures of the chase, and allowed to clothe itself with a spontaneous growth, serving as what is technically called "cover" for wild animals, is, in the dialects I have mentioned, a forest. When, therefore, the Norman kings afforested the grounds referred to in the text, it is not to be supposed that they planted them with trees, though the protection afforded to them by the game laws would, if cattle had been kept out, soon have converted them into real woods.

[257] _Histoire des Paysans_, ii, p. 190. The work of Bonnemere is of great value to those who study the history of mediaeval Europe from a desire to know its real character, and not in the hope of finding apparent facts to sustain a false and dangerous theory. Bonnemere is one of the few writers who, like Michelet, have been honest enough and bold enough to speak the truth with regard to the relations between the church and the people in the Middle Ages.

[258] It is painful to add that a similar outrage was perpetrated a very few years ago, in one of the European states, by a prince of a family now dethroned. In this case, however, the prince killed the trespa.s.ser with his own hand, his sergeants refusing to execute his mandate.

[259] GUILLAUME DE NANGIS, as quoted in the notes to JOINVILLE, _Nouvelle Collection des Memoires, etc._, par Michaud et Poujoulat, premiere serie, i, p. 335.

Persons acquainted with the character and influence of the mediaeval clergy will hardly need to be informed that the ten thousand livres never found their way to the royal exchequer. It was easy to prove to the simple-minded king that, as the profits of sin were a monopoly of the church, he ought not to derive advantage from the commission of a crime by one of his subjects; and the priests were cunning enough both to secure to themselves the amount of the fine, and to extort from Louis large additional grants to carry out the purposes to which they devoted the money. "And though the king did take the moneys," says the chronicler, "he put them not into his treasury, but turned them into good works; for he builded therewith the maison-Dieu of Pontoise, and endowed the same with rents and lands; also the schools and the dormitory of the friars preachers of Paris, and the monastery of the Minorite friars."

[260] _Histoire des Paysans_, ii, p. 200.

[261] The following details from Bonnemere will serve to give a more complete idea of the vexatious and irritating nature of the game laws of France. The officers of the chase went so far as to forbid the pulling up of thistles and weeds, or the mowing of any unenclosed ground before St. John's day [24th June], in order that the nests of game birds might not be disturbed. It was unlawful to fence-in any grounds in the plains where royal residences were situated; thorns were ordered to be planted in all fields of wheat, barley, or oats, to prevent the use of ground nets for catching the birds which consumed, or were believed to consume, the grain, and it was forbidden to cut or pull stubble before the first of October, lest the partridge and the quail might be deprived of their cover. For destroying the eggs of the quail, a fine of one hundred livres was imposed for the first offence, double that amount for the second, and for the third the culprit was flogged and banished for five years to a distance of six leagues from the forest.--_Histoire des Paysans_, ii, p. 202, text and notes.

Neither these severe penalties, nor any provisions devised by the ingenuity of modern legislation, have been able effectually to repress poaching. "The game laws," says Clave, "have not delivered us from the poachers, who kill twenty times as much game as the sportsmen. In the forest of Fontainebleau, as in all those belonging to the state, poaching is a very common and a very profitable offence. It is in vain that the gamekeepers are on the alert night and day, they cannot prevent it. Those who follow the trade begin by carefully studying the habits of the game. They will lie motionless on the ground, by the roadside or in thickets, for whole days, watching the paths most frequented by the animals," &c.--_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Mai, 1863, p. 160.

The writer adds many details on this subject, and it appears that, as there are "beggars on horseback" in South America, there are poachers in carriages in France.

[262] "Whole trees were sacrificed for the most insignificant purposes; the peasants would cut down two firs to make a single pair of wooden shoes."--MICHELET, as quoted by CLAVe, _etudes_, p. 24.

A similar wastefulness formerly prevailed in Russia, though not from the same cause. In St. Pierre's time, the planks brought to St. Petersburg were not sawn, but hewn with the axe, and a tree furnished but a single plank.

[263] "A hundred and fifty paces from my house is a hill of drift sand, on which stood a few scattered pines. _Pinus sylvestris_, and _Sempervivum tectorum_ in abundance, _Statice armeria_, _Ammone vernalis_, _Dianthus carthusianorum_, with other sand plants, were growing there. I planted the hill with a few birches, and all the plants I have mentioned completely disappeared, though there were many naked spots of sand between the trees. It should be added, however, that the hillock is more thickly wooded than before. * * * It seems then that _Sempervivum tectorum_, &c., will not bear the neighborhood of the birch, though growing well near the _Pinus sylvestris_. I have found the large red variety of _Agaricus deliciosus_ only among the roots of the pine; the greenish-blue _Agaricus deliciosus_ among alder roots, but not near any other tree. Birds have their partialities among trees and shrubs. The _Silviae_ prefer the _Pinus Larix_ to other trees. In my garden this _Pinus_ is never without them, but I never saw a bird perch on _Thuja occidenialis_ or _Juniperus sabina_, although the thick foliage of these latter trees affords birds a better shelter than the loose leaf.a.ge of other trees. Not even a wren ever finds its way to one of them. Perhaps the scent of the _Thuja_ and the _Juniperus_ is offensive to them. I have spoiled one of my meadows by cutting away the bushes. It formerly bore gra.s.s four feet high, because many umbelliferous plants, such as _Heracleum spondylium_, _Spiraea ulmaria_, _Laserpitium latifolia_, &c., grew in it. Under the shelter of the bushes these plants ripened and bore seed, but they gradually disappeared as the shrubs were extirpated, and the gra.s.s now does not grow to the height of more than two feet, because it is no longer obliged to keep pace with the umbellifera which flourished among it."

See a paper by J. G. b.u.t.tNER, of Kurland, in BERGHAUS' _Geographisches Jahrbuch_, 1852, No. 4, pp. 14, 15.